


Hunger

by coaldustcanary



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Bonding, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 18:02:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7116817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coaldustcanary/pseuds/coaldustcanary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Recovering from her wounds after the Battle of Ostagar, Natia Brosca tries to understand her newly-ravenous appetite with help from her fellow Grey Warden. Awkward bonding ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunger

**Author's Note:**

> I imagine Wardens from non-noble origins might have some trouble adjusting to their newly increased appetites. Or maybe it's not so different from what they're used to...

Natia Brosca was familiar with many flavors of hunger. The most common sort tasted like a bad bit of char from an overcooked nug falling to ash in her mouth. That was the flavor of most disappointing, food-scarce days in Dust Town. There was also the sweet, copper tang of food denied that bloomed like a bite of rare, red bronto meat on the back of her tongue. When the servants to the wealthy would dispose of their rich scraps, they were often fouled with the poisonous cleanings from deep mushrooms so that any who picked through their trash risked sickness or worse. Seeing that waste had always set Natia to swallowing, hard, to down the bile that rose like fury in her throat.

Everyone’s hunger had a flavor, really. Rica would always simply deny that she was hungry in her controlled, cultured manner, or she would gently claim that her singing tutor would be angry if her voice turned throaty from having eaten too soon before a lesson. Her denials were sharp and sweet, and pressing the issue would end with her knocking Natia on her ass, and so her sister’s hunger always tasted like heady honey mead, to Natia’s mind. Leske’s hunger was sharp, too, and his endless complaining tasted prickly and wheedling, tart and exasperating all at once, a beer brewed to be sour and funky and finish on the tongue like sweet fruit when he’d grin disarmingly in the face of Natia’s annoyance and make her laugh.

Natia’s own appetite, long curbed by regular privation, had exploded back to life in the days since the Joining. It was just another thing, one of many that Duncan had never thought to mention, another thing that there had never been time to think of in those scattered days at Ostagar. After waking afterwards in Flemeth’s hut, her body laced with fading pain and the sparks of healing magic, she gulped her way through a bowl of the simple stew left simmering over the fire. She shoveled the lean meat and bone broth into her mouth with the carved horn spoon, and even scraped her blunt, calloused fingers along the sides of the wooden bowl and smacked them loudly into her mouth.

And then she hesitated, blinking into the flames owlishly as she sat on her heels. She still felt empty, like the food had hardly touched her aching gut. It, and she, felt hollow, and the licked-clean bowl dangled precariously from suddenly nerveless fingers. With sudden gentleness, the bowl was plucked from her hands, and she startled, scuffling sideways and nearly careening into the stone fireplace before falling gracelessly on her rear. Natia scowled and blinked up at the tall figure looming above her. Alistair only smiled sheepishly from where he stood, and crouched to press a second bowl of stew into her hands.

“Maker bless, I’m sorry I startled you, I…yes…well, you’re still hungry, right? Take this, eat up,” he said. “You’ll be a lot hungrier, now. It’s probably rather unnerving.” Natia brushed off her hands against her pants and scrambled to her feet, taking the proffered bowl swiftly but with care not to spill a single drop. She sidled a step away so that her back was firmly against the hut’s wall, though her muscles cramped and twinged in protest. When Alistair sat beside the hearth on one of the low stools, stretching his long legs out toward the fire, she only barely topped his height standing arrow-straight. She scowled, and his head tilted slightly to the side as he watched her eat quietly, not unlike the way the mabari would already look to her for direction.

“I’m used to being hungry,” Natia finally said after gulping a mouthful of the stew, chewing, and pondering in silence for a moment, since he seemed to expect some kind of reply. The food was still tasteless and unsatisfying, but she ate it mechanically, shifting her weight on her toes to try to ease the soreness that lingered. She had no sense of when she’d be able to eat again, so she would eat what she could and hope only that she wouldn’t make herself sick. The meals she’d eaten with Duncan as they’d traveled from Orzammar had been good, if strangely spiced to her tongue – but she’d hardly noticed, in truth, always eating with her eyes wide as she tried to take in the entirety of the open, endless sky. The meals at Ostagar, before the battle, had been soldier’s fare, so she’d been told – plain rations of dried meat, crispbread, and pottage. It had tasted flat and cold, like nearly every topsider’s face that had bothered to turn her way. But food had never tasted so empty before, not like this.

“It was one of the few benefits of being a Grey Warden you could point to, really. The food was always plentiful and usually good, even if you’re constantly wanting more. We’ll manage, somehow, though I can’t say much for my ability to put a meal together beyond the basics. Do you know how to cook, by any chance?” Alistair asked, eyes wide and guileless. Natia met his gaze evenly as she worked a piece of gristle-bound meat in her mouth, determinedly breaking it down enough to swallow. Silence settled over them uneasily again as she chewed deliberately, finally swallowing down the meat with a grimace and looking away from his questioning gaze, back down to her bowl.

“Depends on what you mean by cooking. I know putting food scraps in water or beer over a fire long enough will kill what makes you sick, mostly. Leave it overnight, and it turns all the same, whatever you’ve got in there. You can’t even tell there were bugs, unless they were particularly big ones,” she said with a nod, scooping up another mouthful of the stew and chewing it briskly. She risked a glance upward, and stilled immediately upon seeing Alistair’s face. It wasn’t an expression she had seen many times before, but she knew pity when she saw it nonetheless.

“Yes, well, I guess we’ll be managing with my meager skills, after all. I thought the legends about dwarves making soup from a stone were pulling my leg, but it sounds like it might have been a tasty alternative, all things considered,” he quipped awkwardly.

Swallowing hard and jamming her spoon into the half-eaten bowl, Natia bared her teeth in a sharp, mocking smile. When his mouth dropped open a little in surprise or hesitation before replying, more brittle words rolled off her tongue without thought, sharp splinters that she spit angrily.

“Looking to catch some bugs of your own for a quick bite already, are you?” she jeered. He snapped his mouth shut and though she felt briefly, bitterly pleased by the dull color that rose in his cheeks as he looked away when her words found their mark, the lingering flavor of food in her mouth took on a sour note. Natia swallowed again, heavily, and sighed, flexing her fingers restlessly at her side. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to reach for her knives, the spoon, or the dumbfounded and infuriating man’s shoulder. He was the only person she had left to even begin to help her understand this mad, sky-filled world, and none of what had happened was his fault. She slouched back against the hut’s wall, frowning.

“Uh, Alistair…” she muttered awkwardly.

“I’m sorry, Natia.” After he spoke firmly but softly over her tentative murmur, she had to snap her own slack mouth shut abruptly. To his credit, he didn’t laugh or even smile at her discomfited expression, though his sandy eyebrows crept up toward his hairline a little. Natia shrugged and stirred her stew, mostly as an excuse to look away from the other Warden’s mild expression.

“I’m not very witty,” Alistair continued. “Sometimes I get at a loss for words, or say exactly the wrong thing. Right now, I don’t know what to say that could possibly be right.”

“It’s fine,” she responded quietly. Out of the corner of her eye, peeking around the braids that framed her face, she saw his broad shoulders hitch upward in a boneless shrug.

“We’ll manage to eat somehow. And the rest, too.” At that, she looked up to meet his gaze once again, and he managed a crooked, disarming smile.

“But you should finish your stew.” Alistair inclined his head toward the other stool by the hearth, the one she’d vacated when he’d first pressed a second helping on her. “And I’m sure you still have questions.”

“Yeah, a few. One’s at the top of the list, though,” Natia said seriously, settling back down on the stool so they sat shoulder to shoulder – or her shoulder to his elbow, really – and balancing the bowl of soup on her lap.

“I’ll answer as best I can,” Alistair replied, nodding encouragement. Natia drew a deep breath before asking, uncertainty making her hesitate.

“Do you have any of that brown spice that Duncan used to cook with?” she asked tentatively. “Because it was delicious and I’d think that spicy touch would cover up a multitude of cooking sins from either of us.” At Alistair’s gobsmacked expression, she plunged ahead gamely.

“I miss him. Duncan. I know I didn’t know him as long as you did, and I know I didn’t mean as much to him, but he saved me, and I miss him. I hardly knew him, and I wish he’d told me a lot more, but what he did tell me was while we ate crispy nug cooked with that spice and it was _amazing_ ,” she finished hurriedly, frowning before risking a glance upward again. Alistair made a quiet noise, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and her eyes widened.

 _Oh, nugshit, I’m a stone-blind fool, the man died and here I am talking about his cooking. Now I’ve gone and made him cry._ Natia rubbed at her face, trying to work out how to apologize, but she was interrupted by a gentle nudge to her arm. Though his eyes were suspiciously bright, Alistair was smiling broadly as he leaned companionably in her direction. She relaxed a little as he chuckled softly and nodded.

“He was a good cook, wasn’t he? I do have some of that spice. Long pepper, he called it. I think it’s something they use a lot to cook with in Rivain. Actually, there was one time, during my training, when Duncan was cooking up an amazing stew with it, much tastier than this one, and he was telling me about when the Wardens were first allowed back in Ferelden…” As Alistair reminisced fondly, Natia half-listened, a small smile on her face, and took another bite of her stew. He was right – it wasn’t particularly good. But for the first time in a long while, it tasted at least a little like something that she might trust to actually ease her hunger.


End file.
